You people have no mercy. Where's Akula?<br>As I was saying to Nagromme, at least it isn't me.<br>I haven't even seen the computer so I don't know if it's really, really bad or just plain bad. <br><br><br>

Yes, that's what I would do if I had a Mac also <br>My problems with the PC are two fold...<br>1. I've never done a wipe and reinstall on a PC. I figured that would be a a good way to do it but I wasn't sure it could be done.<br>2. The PC is not in front of me. I'm not sure what the guy is working with.<br>Thanks<br><br><br>

That is a good question. I've never had to do that on a Widows machine, since I don't own one. I'm assuming that your friend does not have a Windows install disk? (Gawd! He'd have to install all of the service packs, too!)<br><br><br>

It's pretty much the same with Windows, as it is with Macs. Apart from the service packs, of course.<br><br>Oh, the d/l and install of the service packs (and all the security updates and whatnot) shouldn't take too long*, depending on the connection. However, I wouldn't really recommend downloading them with any connection under 1 MB/s. In any case though, for that stuff one should book the whole evening at least.<br><br>*relative expression<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Oh, the d/l and install of the service packs (and all the security updates and whatnot) shouldn't take too long*<p><hr></blockquote><p>Very relative expression. If I remember right after installing XP with SP2 there were over 70 updates done in at least three different restarts. <br><br>------> JD's Trivia game<br><br>------> MCF-MM Trivia game

I updated XP a few months ago and 60 or 70 sounds about right... but it was worse than you describe:<br><br>Windows (and Microsoft's update site too!) did not know the ORDER that those updates must be done in! And it does matter. When Apple Software Update shows ONLY those updates you are now ready for, and then afterward shows news ones (if any), that's a privilege we should not take for granted.<br><br>Windows Update offered a ton of updates, about HALF of which could not actually be completed because others were needed first. Reboot and retry. A few more made it this time. Repeat. Repeat. MORE than three times. And it didn't just check an update and then fail--it would actually download the whole update, THEN spend time trying it, and eventually fail... and then discard the update so the system had to re-download it to try (and probably fail) the next time. <br><br>But the icing on the cake: the failures were for a very simple reason--the system was not YET ready for them--but Microsoft displayed no intelligible message to that effect! I got obscure, technical sounding, and non-specific error messages instead. Along with a suggestion to see the help site for more info--but naturally, no actual LINK to the help page! So I manually TYPED the help address shown in the error dialog, got to the help site, and had to now search manually for the terms in the error. The multiple help page(s) for the error said LESS--that's right, less--than the original error message.<br><br>And not one hint in the errors or the help docs suggested this might be a normal expected part of EVERY large Windows update, caused by updates being attempted (by Windows itself and not in your control) out of order. People see these errors thousands of times a day, yet Microsoft has never phrased them clearly, nor even documented their clear and explanable cause. Not anyplace I could find--and I wasted a LOT of time looking.<br><br>And nowhere in the errors or the help did it say what to DO about the errors. The answer is simple and they could have told me instead of letting me flounder: just keep rebooting and retrying. But nothing told me that. I figured it out eventually.<br><br>Naturally I wanted the update done RIGHT, not just completed after a ton of errors and wondering what state my system was in and what the future might hold. But I had no indication of whether this procedure was "OK" or not. (I guess it was--it's what Windows users expect and accept?)<br><br>I could not believe it.<br><br>nagr[color:red]o</font color=red>mme<br><br>I require stroyent!<br>TeamMacOSX.com | MacClan.net

Hmmm. I just did a recent reinstall of XP Home SP2 on the kid's pc because I was putting in a fresh hard drive (old hard drive has my files). I used Express Mode and didn't have any problems. 95 or so percent were done within 20-30 minutes. The other 5% were spread out and installed transparently enough. <br><br>Where I see that one problem you mentioned is the update KB934238* which is slotted to install first but actually requires .Net Framework 3.0 SP1 which should've come first (or maybe not. See below). I might've missed other similar problems because I did the reinstall a month ago. But, the rest of the updates were in the right sequence and installed fine.<br><br>Looking at Review Update History, there were a total of 60 items. 40 of those were KB934238.* It was the only item marked red. All the other updates were green.<br><br>KB934238 concerns updates to the printing components of XP. That pc has no printer hooked up (it's connected to kid's Mac Mini). Since there's no printer hooked up, XP quit looking for that particular update. <br><br>*So with XP SP2, the total updates were 20........at least on my kid's pc.<br><br><br> <br><br><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by tahoegazer on 02/16/08 10:10 PM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

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